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Psilocybe cubensis
TEX PE6
The Penis Envy that actually shares its spores. A hobbyist cross of PE and a Texas cubensis, built to keep the PE look while finally dropping a heavy, dark, study-friendly print.
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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.
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The short version
TEX PE6 is a hobbyist hybrid of Penis Envy and a Texas Psilocybe cubensis, bred for one reason: to keep the famous Penis Envy character while actually sporulating reliably. Most accounts trace it to the Shroomery scene around the late 1990s to early 2000s, though the creator and exact details are contested. The headline for a collector is that, unlike its stingy PE parent, PE6 drops a genuine dark purple-brown print.
Straight talk
Fact vs. legend
There is a lot of folklore around this strain. Here is which bits are real, side by side.
What we actually know
- It is a Psilocybe cubensis, specifically a hobbyist hybrid of a Penis Envy line crossed with a Texas cubensis. Not a separate species, not a wild landrace.
- The whole point of the cross was sporulation: classic Penis Envy is a notoriously poor, slow spore producer, and PE6 was bred to keep PE traits while dropping a usable print.
- By most accounts it deposits a genuinely dark purple-brown print, much more readily than its PE parent, which is exactly why collectors sought it out.
- Morphologically it sits between its parents, more open caps and more proportionate stems than tight PE, while keeping some of PE's chunkiness.
- It is generally dated to the Shroomery-era scene of the late 1990s to early 2000s, though the exact timeline is uncertain and some accounts place the wider Texas PE6 leak considerably later.
What the community says
- The cross is most often credited to a Shroomery user remembered as RogerRabbit, though some accounts name a figure called Workman instead. Treat the attribution as community lore, not settled history.
- RogerRabbit's own telling is wonderfully strange: he is said to have put a PE isolate and a Texas isolate on the same agar plate with rattlesnake venom added, claiming the venom helped the two strains swap genetics into a new sector he labelled PE6. Read this as a colourful origin tale rather than documented method.
- The story goes that the prints escaped before he was finished, reportedly mailed out by accident in a stack of other prints, which is why the line spread before it was ever formally released.
- Because it carries the Penis Envy name and lineage, it inherits PE's own contested backstory, including the much-repeated Terence McKenna and Steven Pollock Amazonian tale. That lineage myth belongs to PE in general and is unverified.
- Numbered PE spin-offs like PE6 invite the assumption of a tidy PE1 through PE6 series. There is no documented, orderly numbered programme behind the name.
The story
The Penis Envy that finally let go of its spores
Most famous cubes are loved for how they look or how they grow. TEX PE6 is loved for something much nerdier: it is the Penis Envy line that you can actually take a print from. Standard Penis Envy is the diva of the cubensis world, a poor and reluctant sporulator with a cap that barely opens, and that scarcity is half its reputation. PE6 is the answer somebody built to that problem.
By most accounts the story starts in the old Shroomery scene somewhere around the late 1990s to early 2000s, when a grower remembered as RogerRabbit set out to cross a Penis Envy isolate with a vigorous Texas cubensis. Some retellings credit a figure called Workman instead, and the dates are fuzzy, so treat the name and timeline as community lore rather than fact. The aim was simple and clever: keep the Penis Envy character, borrow the Texas side's willingness to drop a real spore print.
The headline is that PE6 is the rare Penis Envy relative a collector can study from a normal, heavy, dark print rather than a stingy smear.
A great tale, told with a straight face
RogerRabbit's own account of how he made the cross is one of the better yarns in the hobby. He reportedly described placing a PE isolate and a Texas isolate on the same agar plate with rattlesnake venom added, and claimed the venom somehow helped the two share genetic material into a third sector he named PE6. It is a fantastic story and almost certainly not how the genetics actually worked, so enjoy it as legend. The line is said to have leaked out before he was finished, apparently mailed by accident among other prints, and it spread from there. What is not in dispute is the end result: a more cubensis-looking, more cooperative cousin of Penis Envy that earned its place in the collection.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
TEX PE6 is a collector’s line of a single, well-travelled species. Psilocybe cubensis was first written up in 1906 by the American mycologist Franklin Sumner Earle, from a specimen found in a cattle field in Cuba, which is where the name comes from. He originally called it Stropharia cubensis; Rolf Singer moved it into the genus Psilocybe in 1948.
The genus name is a tidy bit of Greek: psilos (“bare”) plus kubē (“head”), for the smooth, peelable skin of the cap, so the full name reads roughly as “the bare-headed mushroom from Cuba.”
- Family
- Hymenogastraceae (older books say Strophariaceae)
- Genus
- Psilocybe (Fr.) P. Kumm., 1871
- Species
- Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer, 1948
- Basionym
- Stropharia cubensis Earle, 1906
- This product
- TEX PE6, a collector’s cultivar of the species
- Type locality
- Cuba (where it was first named)
How you’d know it
Field marks
These describe the mature mushroom for reference and identification.
Caps that open more than PE
More like a traditional cubensis than its tight, knobbly Penis Envy parent. Caps expand toward broad and rounded as they mature, golden to caramel brown, often a touch paler at the rim. Less of the stubborn closed-fist look that makes pure PE so stingy.
Chunky pale stem
White to off-white, thick and fibrous, carrying some of the heft PE is known for. A partial veil typically leaves a ring zone on the upper stem, often dusted purple-brown once the spores ripen.
Gills that darken and actually drop
Crowded, pale grey when young, deepening to chocolate then near-black as the spores mature. The standout for this line is that they release a genuine, heavy print rather than the sparse trace pure Penis Envy is infamous for.
Blue bruising
Handle the flesh and it bruises blue-green where psilocybin oxidises to blue pigments. Standard Psilocybe behaviour, present across cubensis including this hybrid.
Where it comes from
A dung-lover with a wanderer’s history
Psilocybe cubensis is coprophilic, a fancy word for dung-loving. In the wild it lives on the droppings of big grazing animals, classically cattle and water buffalo, fruiting from warm, humid pasture. It does not grow on wood and it does not partner with tree roots.
You’ll find it across the warm parts of the world: the Gulf Coast of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, Southeast Asia and Australia. It was named from Cuba, but where the lineage truly began is an open question. A 2026 study describing its closest wild relative in southern Africa suggests the deep roots are Old-World, the mushroom having apparently travelled with grazing herds long before anyone gave it a Latin name.
The main event
Under the microscope
This is what you actually bought the spores for. Put a print or a drop from a syringe on a slide and here’s what shows up.
- Shape & size. Smooth, thick-walled and subellipsoid, like a slightly squashed rugby ball, roughly 11.5–17 µm long by 8–11 µm wide (the figures Paul Stamets settled on).
- The germ pore. Look for a single pale, flattened dot at one end. That’s the one thin spot in the wall where, in nature, a mushroom would begin, and a real cubensis hallmark.
- Pale alone, dark in a crowd. A single spore looks honey-amber with the light behind it; only in a mass do they read deep purple-brown to black. So a near-black print but pale spores on the slide is normal optics, not a dud.
- What you’ll need. Find the field at 100×, study shape and the germ pore at 400×, and get the wall crisp at 1000× under oil. A touch of methylene blue or KOH lifts the contrast.
- The legal bit, and why it’s true. A dormant spore carries no psilocybin or psilocin at all; that chemistry only appears later in living tissue. That is exactly why the spores are legal to own and study in the UK.
Choose your format
Print, syringe, vial or swab?
Same lab-grade genetics in every option. The honest difference is shelf life versus how soon you’re at the scope.
Spore print
Keeps longest
Spores dropped straight onto sterile foil. Stored cool and dry it outlasts everything else here, so it’s the one to reach for if you’re building a collection to keep for years.
Spore syringe
Ready tonight
Spores suspended in sterile water, ready to go straight onto a slide. The quickest way to be looking down the microscope this evening. Comes in 3 mL and 12 mL.
Vial & swab
Compact
A sealed glass vial is a tidy middle ground; a sterile swab is the most travel-friendly, robust little format for adding a strain to your reference set.
At a glance
The spec sheet
- Species
- Psilocybe cubensis
- Strain
- TEX PE6 (collector’s cultivar)
- Spore print
- Dark purple-brown to near-black, heavy depositor
- Spore shape
- Subellipsoid, smooth, thick-walled, with a germ pore
- Spore size
- ~11.5–17 × 8–11 µm
- Basidia
- Mostly 4-spored, ~20–30 × 7–10 µm
- Wild habitat
- Coprophilic, on herbivore dung & warm pasture
- Climate
- Subtropical to tropical
- Intended use
- Microscopy, research & collecting only
Dig deeper
Further reading
Independent, non-commercial sources, no shops, just good information.
- Psilocybe cubensis on Wikipedia: the species overview.
- The genus Psilocybe: taxonomy and the family reshuffle.
- Index Fungorum: the formal nomenclature record.
- Proc. Royal Society B (2026): the African wild-relative study.
Common questions
Frequently asked
Yes, for microscopy and research. A dormant spore contains no psilocybin or psilocin, so the spores themselves are not a controlled substance in the UK. We sell them strictly for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting, never for cultivation.
No. It is a hybrid of a Penis Envy line and a Texas cubensis. It keeps some of PE's chunky character but, crucially for a collector, it behaves much more like a normal cubensis at print time.
By most accounts yes, and that is the whole reason the line exists. Pure Penis Envy is a famously poor, slow sporulator, while PE6 was bred to deposit a real, dark purple-brown print far more reliably.
Take it as lore. It comes from the creator's own colourful telling, it is almost certainly not how the genetics worked, and the names and dates around the cross are contested. We separate that legend from the one thing that is clear: it is a PE by Texas cubensis hybrid that sporulates well.
Smooth, thick-walled, subellipsoid spores, pale amber individually and dark purple-brown in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end. Find them at 100x, study at 400x, and get the wall sharp at 1000x under oil immersion.
Cool, dark and dry. A fridge (not freezer) suits syringes and vials, while a print keeps happily in a sealed bag somewhere cool. Stored well, a print stays viable for study for years.
What customers say
Reviews
The professional service is always the highest possible
I have yet to get these under a microscope but all seems to be in order
Ya
Perfect product in excellent condition
Looking great under my microscope so far.
Arrived perfectly in a foil packet. Plenty of spores in there. I will be back again no doubt 👌
Reply from Cylocybe
Thank you for the review and hope to see you back again soon :)
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For microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only.Sold for legal research. Not for cultivation. Spores contain no controlled substances. We trust you to be responsible.